Is This How I Will Be Treated? Reducing Uncertainty Through Recruitment Interactions

While a great deal of research has investigated strategies for increasing job seekers’ initial attraction to organizations, far less is known about how job seekers respond to recruitment activities after application submission. We draw from signaling, justice, and uncertainty reduction theories to develop a conceptual model of the relationship between recruitment interactions (contact episodes) after application submission and organizational attraction. To test this model, we employed a longitudinal (repeated measures) design to examine reactions to recruitment interactions across 10 weeks. Findings indicate that justice perceptions associated with recruitment interactions influence organizational attraction indirectly and directly via increased certainty about being treated well as an employee. Additionally, results indicate that the relationship between justice signals and organizational attraction via certainty about being treated well is dynamic in nature, suggesting that organizations should carefull...